


Random Access

by raininshadows



Category: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Gen, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-15 10:22:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13029015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raininshadows/pseuds/raininshadows
Summary: Murderbot tries to remember why the humans are trying to wipe its memory.





	Random Access

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alliterate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alliterate/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! Hope you like the fic!
> 
> Thanks to aikaye on Discord for betaing.

I couldn’t think properly, or even really at all other than “kill anything that moves”. I was vaguely aware I was covered in blood. Some of it was probably mine, but not all of it — even a SecUnit couldn’t lose this much blood and still be functional. Something moved in the distance, where the humans had hung back after I shot the first one that came near me once I’d left the mine. 

There were a group of people standing there. One of them, wearing a company technician uniform, was staring at me intently. A moment later, an overwhelming command hit me: _shut down_. 

I woke up in an eye-searingly bright room. There were two company technicians staring at consoles. My armor was missing, and the blood was gone. If I’d been hurt at all, it had been fixed. I couldn’t move. 

“We’re just going to purge its memory, not destroy it? Really?” one of the technicians asked. “After what it did? I know it’s fixed now, but we’ll never be able to rent it again. Probably more cost-efficient to strip it for parts.”

“Hey, Corporate thinks they can,” the other technician replied. “You saw the work order. Purge its memory so it can go out again.” 

The first technician sighed. “Yeah, I know. Just a minute.” She typed something into her console. A series of commands came through, practically on top of each other: _remove from permanent memory. write to permanent memory. clear temporary memory._

**SHUTTING DOWN NOW MAY PERMANENTLY DAMAGE MEMORY. SHUT DOWN ANYWAY? [Y/N]**

_y_

I woke up again. 

I was lying on a table in an eye-searingly bright room. I couldn’t access the feed, and when I tried, a shrill beeping started on the other side of the room. One of the technicians looked up from her data pad and over at me. “It’s awake,” she said, drawing the attention of the other technicians. 

“That’s odd,” one of the others muttered. “It shouldn’t be.” 

“There’s obviously something wrong with this one anyway, Morimoto,” the first one said. “It’s not the first weird bug we’ve seen during memory purges.”

Something wrong with me. I’d done something wrong. What had I done? They’d said they were trying to purge my memory. I tried to remember what had happened. 

_The mine was dark, but then, most of them were. I’d been on mining contracts before. Boring as hell, usually, but the dangers there weren’t my problem. I just fought. I didn’t deal with mine collapses or explosions or breathing equipment malfunctions._

_This mine didn’t look like it was one of the collapse-prone ones. Not that I was terribly qualified in the area, but I figured I could notice patterns as well as the next murderbot, and I’d seen mines about to collapse before. This one seemed reasonably stable._

_Something felt wrong, though, and I wasn’t sure what it was. Something was niggling at the back of my mind. My governor chip had been acting weird for a while; that might be it. The miners’ HubSystem had always managed to override its weirder commands, but something in the threat detection framework seemed to be fundamentally buggy._

_Today my job was to help inside the mine. The mining company had no particular need for ten SecUnits doing actual security work, but they could always use more people doing heavy lifting and dealing with the machinery. Especially since we could regrow limbs if one of the machines ate them._

_One of the miners was carrying a high-powered sonic drill — they’d hit a particularly hard chunk of rock recently, and it was taking more than the usual equipment to get through it. My governor chip kept flagging it as a danger, and I kept overriding it._

_“Hey, SecUnit, come help move this!” someone yelled._

And I couldn’t remember past that. 

“Dammit,” the first technician said. “It’s trying to access its own memory. Shut it down again, and hope it doesn’t wake up on the next pass.”

**SHUTTING DOWN NOW MAY PERMANENTLY DAMAGE MEMORY. SHUT DOWN ANYWAY? [Y/N]**

_y_

When I woke up the next time, my system logs said I’d come online several times without properly waking up. The same technicians were poking at consoles in the same bright room. I could feel more damage to my memory, presumably from more forced shutdowns. 

“We’re almost done,” the first technician said, sounding slightly hopeful. I checked the clock — it had been almost eighteen hours since the last time I’d woken up, and from the timestamps on my power cycles, they’d been here pretty much constantly. She had to be exhausted by now. 

The second technician — Morimoto — glanced over at me and visibly deflated. “Ah, shit. Ozis, it’s awake again.” 

Ozis stepped over to me. “Hey. You awake?” she asked. I couldn’t move. If I’d been able to indicate that somehow, I would have. As it was, I just stared at her. Finally, it clicked that I still couldn’t move. She ducked back over to her console and typed for a few seconds; as soon as she hit Enter, I could move again. “Sorry about that,” she said, and then blinked as if not sure why she’d apologized to a SecUnit. “Are you awake now?”

“Yes,” I said, trying to lift one arm and discovering restraints on it. 

“What do you remember most recently?” Ozis asked. Morimoto seemed about to say something, but Ozis stopped him. 

“I…” My memory was noticeably missing chunks. “Waking up here, with you trying to purge my memory, and trying to figure out why. Trying to figure out what I’d done.” 

“And before that?” Ozis asked. 

_”Hey, SecUnit, come help move this!”, and then the guns activating and not being able to stop them, and then huddling outside firing at anything that moved in the distance_ —

“I was working in the mine. Someone told me to help move something. I don’t know after that.”

She nodded. “That’s good.” She turned to address Morimoto. “Sounds like it’s clean, then. Power-cycle one more time and call it good?”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Morimoto said. 

I didn’t have time to protest before I registered the shutdown command. 

I woke up again, in a normal cubicle this time. There was a set of messages waiting to be read — normal ones. I’d been rented out for a survey mission. I had to read the dossiers and the mission briefing and be ready to go within a few hours. I could still feel the holes in my memory. I could still remember something taking me over and forcing me to kill all those miners. It must have been the governor chip malfunctioning, I realized. 

That was when I resolved to hack my governor chip someday. I knew what happened to rogue SecUnits, but at this point I didn’t care. Even being stripped for parts couldn’t possibly be worse than being power-cycled until my memory of the murders was supposedly gone. But that would have to wait until I could get the access codes. Right now it was time to be a good murderbot. 

I had a few more hours in the cubicle before I needed to go meet the survey team — more than enough time to read the dossiers and briefing. I settled in to do that, the thought of hacking my governor chip waiting in the back of my mind.


End file.
